often angry. always gen x.

dowd: the boy who wanted to fly

“Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than itself.” ―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars

This was the most heartbreaking news I read this week (in a great many weeks, for that matter). Thanks to Maura for following up with such a lovely article. Well worth reading both pieces on what an extraordinary young man was lost to us early, and why.

Rory Staunton was always looking up.

As soon as he could walk, he wanted to fly. The exuberant freckle-faced redhead from Sunnyside, Queens, yearned to be up in the romantic night sky where, as the French pilot and poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, the stars are laughing.

His parents told him he’d have to wait until he was 16 to take flying lessons. But it’s hard to tell a determined 5-foot-9, 169-pound 12-year-old what to do.

…Rory’s idol, Sully Sullenberger, was touched and left a message on the child’s tribute page. The hero of the Hudson is now an advocate for applying “lessons learned in blood” in aviation safety to patient safety.